


The Burning of the World

by OldShrewsburyian



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Gen, Light Angst, Literary References & Allusions, Male Friendship, Sandwiches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-07-11 07:44:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15967826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldShrewsburyian/pseuds/OldShrewsburyian
Summary: Set shortly after the conclusion of season 5, this was inspired by a dialogue prompt from Lucyemers. The case on which they are working, to which Morse alludes, is not one covered in canon. The title, and Fred Thursday's rather apocalyptic musings about a world without Win's sandwiches, are taken from Thomas Burnet's 1797 speculative cosmogony,Concerning the Burning of the World: and Concerning the new heavens and new earth. With a review of the theory, and of its proofs; especially in reference to scripture.





	The Burning of the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lucyemers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucyemers/gifts).



“Can you hear me, sir? Sir!” Morse swallows hard. At this hour, there’s no one else in the station. But he wouldn’t want Thursday, coming round, to hear the edge of panic in his voice. He clears his throat. “Sir?” He places his hand briefly, hesitantly, on the shoulder of his superior officer.

“Hmm?” Thursday raises his head from the desk. Perhaps just fallen asleep, then -- but it would be the first time such a thing has happened, to Morse’s knowledge, and there’s a curious pallor to the man’s face.

“I, ah, came to fetch you, sir. Drive you home.” He half-nods towards the door. “It’s late.” It’s a statement of the obvious and a half-truth — two things that Thursday hates as much as he does himself — but through the haze of his own fatigue, he can manage no better.

“Come up again,” says Thursday half-dreamily, “to the same place from whence they started at the beginning of the world. Then this course of nature will be at an end; and either the heavens will cease from all motion, or a new set of motions will be put afoot, and the world begin again.”

“Sir?” says Morse, and Thursday shakes himself slightly, stands up, not quite steady on his feet. Morse, as if galvanized, reaches for the other man’s coat, tries to hold it out for him as though this were entirely within the scope of their normal routines.

“This,” says Thursday, shrugging it on, “is a bundle of fictions tied up in a pretty knot. There is no such thing as a solid firmament.”

“No, sir,” agrees Morse, with a sigh. “Although — ” He breaks off.

“What, Morse?”

“Nothing, sir. At least, there was something in what Pomfret said in his statement about the observatory: Atlas, with the weight of the world…” He smiles, hands Thursday his hat. “It’ll come to me in the morning, I expect.”

“Yes,” says Thursday, rather heavily, as they descend the steps of the police station. 

“And it was evening, and it was morning,” quotes Morse easily, and then feels that, somehow, it was the wrong thing to do. He puts the key in the ignition, gets them out into the quiet night. As he looks at Thursday’s face in the fitful light of the street lamps, he cannot help thinking that the other man has aged too rapidly, and at the wrong time. If he were going to look grayer, older, more defeated by the world, then surely that change should have come when Joan left, and not when she returned? Surely when they were still trying to track the gangs who made Oxford so dangerous, and not now? It occurs to Morse, abruptly, what was wrong with Thursday’s office: no waxed paper in the bin. He clears his throat.

“Something wrong, Morse?”

“You’ll think me impertinent, sir.”

“Will I?”

“I expect so. But I — I was wondering if you’d eaten. There’s not much at mine, of course, but I could make us sandwiches.”

**Author's Note:**

> Set shortly after the conclusion of season 5, this was inspired by a dialogue prompt from Lucyemers. The case on which they are working, to which Morse alludes, is not one covered in canon. The title, and Fred Thursday's rather apocalyptic musings about a world without Win's sandwiches, are taken from Thomas Burnet's 1797 speculative cosmogony, _Concerning the Burning of the World: and Concerning the new heavens and new earth. With a review of the theory, and of its proofs; especially in reference to scripture._


End file.
